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I helped a friend out with an issue like this recently. If you know his name, get a background check done on him. That should give you plenty to go off of. I

by tsally 18y ago

I helped a friend out with an issue like this recently. If you know his name, get a background check done on him. That should give you plenty to go off of. If you don't know his name, try figuring out which service provider his phone number is from. I assume the email has stripped out the IP address in the headers? If not, just plug that into one of the many databases available online. If all of that fails, try this. Set up a webserver for which you have complete logging. Then, send the guy an email from a different account with a link. If somehow you can get him to visit your webserver, you can log his IP address. This is completely legal and there's not even anything that underhanded about it. You just need to get him to visit a webpage on your server. The IP address will give you an ISP and a general location. Armed with this data, you should have no trouble. EDIT: For those that are suggesting he post the info, I strongly advise against it. Also, why would you track down someone when you don't even know the truthfulness of the original poster's story? I don't believe he's lying, but that doesn't mean I would get personally involved. There is a big difference between giving general advice and actually carrying out the action yourself. Further, HN doesn't need to follow the type of witchhunt behaviour that often happens on other sites like Reddit.

skolor 18y ago
I would start with the email. Headers store quite a bit of information, and can usually tell you where the email started from. Start by contacting whoever the email originated from. Unfortunately, its rather easy to get beyond the range any realistic, legal tracking can be done. Your best bet of finally tracking the person down is to go by the phone number, but that will likely (if he knows what he's doing) be a pre-paid phone with fake information that has no way to be traced back to him (other than rough estimates of location, and the phone companies are unlikely to release that kind of information). Its really unfortunate that most of cyber-forensics relies on analysis of computer systems to prove that a person did something, rather than finding and tracking down who did it. With all that said, the good news is that a few Google searches may turn up some useful information. Google the phone number, email and name, maybe you'll get lucky and either find the person bragging about it, or someone else in the same situation.

by tsally 18y ago

skolor 18y ago

I would start with the email. Headers store quite a bit of information, and can usually tell you where the email started from. Start by contacting whoever the email originated from. Unfortunately, its rather easy to get beyond the range any realistic, legal tracking can be done. Your best bet of finally tracking the person down is to go by the phone number, but that will likely (if he knows what he's doing) be a pre-paid phone with fake information that has no way to be traced back to him (other than rough estimates of location, and the phone companies are unlikely to release that kind of information). Its really unfortunate that most of cyber-forensics relies on analysis of computer systems to prove that a person did something, rather than finding and tracking down who did it. With all that said, the good news is that a few Google searches may turn up some useful information. Google the phone number, email and name, maybe you'll get lucky and either find the person bragging about it, or someone else in the same situation.